Introduction by Dr. John Baden, Chairman, FREE Most contentious issues of public policy are nuanced and highly complex while carrying heavy emotional baggage. These ingredients foster error and acrimony. Intelligent people of good will, even those sharing similar values, can strongly disagree on policy prescriptions. This situation produces strong temptations to discredit and denigrate policy opponents. These characteristics are […]
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Introduced by Dr. John Baden, Chairman, FREE The first FREE Insight of 2013, “The Real Cliff”, is by Christopher DeMuth and was in The Weekly Standard on December 24, 2012. Chris explains the political logic that generated America’s huge debt and recurrent, soon to be replicated, trillion plus dollar deficits. He warns us that debt […]
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“Happy New Year” may seem an inappropriate cry as America balances on the edge of governments’ financial cliffs. We’ve been edging toward this danger for two generations. The reason is simple; politicians have strong incentives to provide current benefits and promise payments in some distant future. That future is ever closer. The politics of this […]
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Despite gains in employment and a drop in the jobless rate in November, the labor force data released Friday were disturbing. They showed a drop of 350,000 in the number of people in the labor force, a big decline for one month and an extension of a troubling trend. Here is the bigger picture: the […]
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This article appeared in New York Post on December 3, 2012. Washington is consumed with wrangling over how to deal with the specter of big automatic tax hikes that will hit Jan. 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire. It’s also the day that the sequester kicks in, which is the budget-wonk term for an automatic process […]
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Introduction by John Baden: Ramona and I often are out of town on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, Election Day. Since we are likely to be gone, we are registered to receive “absentee ballots.” How easy they are; mark, sign, stuff into envelopes, put on a stamp, and we’ve done a small portion of […]
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Pete Geddes is the General Director of the American Prairie Reserve. This is an entrepreneurial foundation dedicated to restoring 3,000,000 acres of grassland and its wildlife and ranches. It’s their “American Serengeti”. Pete came to Bozeman from Missoula nearly 17 years ago after earning his graduate degree in forestry from the U of M. One […]
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What does ‘top-down economics’ really mean? “We can’t afford more top-down economics. What we need are policies that will grow and strengthen the middle class.” — Barack Obama “Top-down economics” is a hijacked phrase. Objectively, it should be the label assigned to rule-of-czar capitalism steered by government officials. Instead, campaign rhetoric has been assigning it […]
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John Goodman’s article for FREE this week underscores a crucial flaw in ObamaCare. Not a flaw of legislation, regulation or execution, but a very serious flaw in understanding how medicine works. The fundamental unit of health care is the physician and the patient, making and discussing the diagnosis together and jointly deciding the best diagnostic […]
Read MoreI’m writing this column on the night before the presidential election of 2012. Surely the attention of readers will be on the election tomorrow—and probably for some time thereafter. I’m praying for an early and decisive ending of this grotesque demonstration of avarice, deception, and manipulation of fears. In the weeks prior to the election, […]
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